


Benevolent

by star_child



Series: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bullying, Childhood, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/star_child/pseuds/star_child
Summary: (ba-NEV-o-lent)adjectivewell meaning and kindly





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yamaguchi helps everyone but himself

It starts when they’re ten. Bullies corner Tadashi in the hallways, malice hidden behind pity inducing smiles and wide eyes. “I don’t have a lunch today, Yama-kun,” one of them whines. “My mom was too busy trying to take care of my younger sisters, she didn’t have the time to make me one.”

Tadashi glances between the three boys, sympathy welling up in his chest. “I guess… you can have mine, if you want…” He’s too busy reaching into his bag to see the false exhaustion on their faces morph into cruel smiles before melting back again immediately. He hands the bento box over to the boy with the story, smiles reassuringly at him.

The boys hardly thank him before they’re running off down the hall with the stolen bento.

At lunch, Kei pulls out an earbud when Tadashi sits down beside him, gestures to his empty hands and asks why he doesn’t have a lunch.

“Oh! Ah, Matsumura-kun didn’t have one so –”

Kei squints his eyes behind his glasses. “Matsumura? Matsumura Jiro?”

Tadashi nods.

Kei clicks his tongue and sits back in his seat, holding his chopsticks out to Tadashi. He blinks at him once, twice, before taking them, taking a small bite of rice with a piece of pork, then hands them back. “Thank you.”

“Matsumura is a real jerk,” Kei says after he takes another bite of his lunch. He hands the chopsticks back to Tadashi. “Him and all of his friends. And he doesn’t have little sisters.”

Tadashi blinks up at him slowly, handing the chopsticks back mechanically. “But… he told me…”

Kei rolls his eyes, not wholly unkind. “He just wanted your food, Tadashi.” He shoves another bite in to stop himself from tacking on that it may not have even been that, he may have just wanted to deprive the smaller boy of his lunch.

They hand the chopsticks back and forth for the rest of lunch, and Tadashi packs two bentos the next day anyway, continues giving Matsumura Jiro his lunch because he feels it’s what he’s supposed to do.

* * *

At thirteen years old, they stand beside each other during a school field trip. It's snowing out, just as they'd hoped, and the whole class is enjoying themselves. For a science project, they all return to the same field once a month to observe how it changes with the seasons. It's an all day thing. The morning is usually spent gathering observations – they can write paragraphs, jot bullets, draw pictures, diagrams, anything they want – and the afternoon is spent having fun outside.

At the moment, Kei is crouched in the snow, rolling tiny snowmen. Tadashi kneels beside him, partially watching him, partially watching a group of kids in front of them. They laugh and throw snowballs, push each other around. A small smile crosses Tadashi’s face as he watches them have fun.

Suddenly a girl gets pushed too hard, and she falls into a nearby snowbank. Kei looks up as Tadashi sucks in a small breath, and they both watch as the girl’s friends surround her, pulling her up and brushing her off. She’s okay, it looks like, but her coat is completely soaked. Tadashi is running over before Kei can stop him.

The girl is smiling but shivering, he sees when he gets closer. Her name is Akiyama Miyuki, she has small but bright brown eyes, brown hair currently stuffed under a yellow hat, and a yellow jacket that’s been almost completely soaked in the time it took her to get up.

“Akiyama-kun!” Tadashi calls to get her attention. Her and her friends turn around to look at him at once, and he resists the urge to shrink under their gazes. Some of them smile at him, some of them roll their eyes. He focuses on Akiyama.

“Hi Yamaguchi-kun,” she smiles, holding her arms a bit out to the side. She’s the type to stand leaning forward on her toes; she looks like a dripping, yellow bird, ready to take flight.

“I ah, I saw you fall,” Tadashi mumbles, awkward and unsure what to say now that he’s actually here. He fiddles with the zipper of his coat, and suddenly knows what to do.

Akiyama and her friends watch, surprised into silence as Tadashi wastes no time pulling off his coat and holding it out in front of him. “You can wear mine,” he says when she does nothing more than blink at him.

“No, I couldn’t,” she starts, hesitant even as the color slowly drains from her lips. But Tadashi insists, leaning forward so the coat dangles in front of her. Eventually she can’t resist, shucks off her downy dripping coat and accepts Tadashi’s. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Akiyama asks. She zips up the new navy blue coat, little too large for her but she looks warm nonetheless.

“I have a sweater on anyway,” Tadashi smiles as she stuffs her hands in the pockets, and holds his arms out to the side to display the sweater his mother bought him a month ago for his birthday.

“Okay. Ah, thank you!”

When he waves goodbye, all of her friends smile back at him.

Tadashi trots back to where Kei still crouches, having watched the entire exchange with keen eyes. “That was nice of you,” he states as Tadashi squats beside him. They’re surrounded by fairly dense crowd of tiny snowmen, mostly faceless and armless, dirt marring the pretty white in some places.

“Her jacket was soaked! I didn’t want her to catch a cold,” he replies. He sets to work gathering snow for the base of another small snowman, smiling as he watches Akiyama and her friends resume their playing, this time a little less forcefully.

Kei hums shortly, peering at Tadashi out of the corner of his eye before he follows his example, forming another snowball and finding an empty space to place it. He continues to sneak glances for the rest of the day, trades his thicker gloves for Tadashi’s threadbare ones when his hands start to shake, gives him his hat when his ears start to turn red, finally insists he go talk to a teacher about waiting on the bus when his teeth are chattering so bad he can no longer speak clearly.

The next day Kei’s mother sends him and Akiteru through the neighborhood to the Yamaguchi household with a bowl of soup and a wish for Tadashi to get well soon.

* * *

 

Fifteen year old Tadashi startles awake when his chin slips out of his palm, nearly colliding with the desk. He quickly straightens his back, looking ahead and hoping the teacher hasn’t noticed him dozing. She seems oblivious, back to the class as she writes on the whiteboard.

He pulls his notebook toward him quickly, staring a little overwhelmed at the board for a moment. There’s a lot more on there than when he closed his eyes, and he hardly knows what any of it means. Regardless, he quickly copies down as much as he can see, hoping he’ll be able to go through it tonight and piece everything together.

If he has time.

Home has been busy. His two little sisters and little brother are old enough to start joining club activities, and they’re needing help both with those and with homework. Between working, taking care of them, and taking care of the house, his mother can’t nearly do it all. So with his older brother gone, the responsibility of helping her falls on Tadashi. He helps with dinner, with the kids, with housework.

He doesn’t mind at all, really, he’s just been staying up later to do his own homework, waking up early to finish it before school if he needs to. His lunch break is spent trying to get a head start on whatever has already been assigned that day, scarfing down his food in the last five minutes when he remembers.

The only problem is this new exhaustion.

He’s been zoning out more and more in class lately, though this is the first time he’s gone so far as to fall asleep. He's worked hard to get into class four, and he works hard to stay in it. Falling asleep during lessons and doing his homework in the middle of the night is beginning to take its toll on his grades.

The board goes out of focus for a moment; he pinches the inside of his arm hard, nails leaving two more tiny crescent moons among those that already litter his skin, trying to keep him awake. Half an hour until lunch, the clock says. If he gets the rest of these notes, he can go over them during lunch and hopefully understand what he dozed off for.

When the bell goes, the class simultaneously breaks into conversation, digging through their bags for lunches, scraping chairs back and moving into groups or out the door. Tadashi stays where he is, flipping back a page in his notebook to the notes he copied after he woke up. He sees Tsukishima beside him out of the corner of his eye, as he pulls his headphones up over his ears and takes his lunch out of his bag.

He’s hardly started going over the equations on the page when Hinata and Kageyama burst into the room, pushing past each other to get to him first. “Yamaguchi-kun!” Hinata cries, slamming his hands on the desk and causing him to jump a bit in surprise. Off to the side, Tsukishima closes his eyes. “I need help with my Japanese homework!” Hinata goes on, moving his hand off the packet he’d slammed on the desk a moment ago.

“Oh…” Tadashi starts, eyes straying to his notebook, crazy math notes spread out over several pages. He looks back up at Hinata’s hopeful expression, glances behind him at Kageyama, trying to look nonchalant but looking down often enough that he can tell he needs something to.

With a sigh, Tadashi closes his own notebook and gestures for Hinata to pull up a chair. “Tell me what you’re stuck on,” he says. He’ll just go over his math notes tonight, before he starts on the actual homework.

* * *

A week before his eighteenth birthday, Tadashi has three pens in his hand, a highlighter between his teeth, and he’s surrounded by papers and textbooks.

“Are you doing anything next week?” eighteen year old Tsukishima asks from his place on Tadashi’s bed. He doesn’t look up from the book in his hands, though Tadashi’s eyes find him as soon as he speak.

He spits out the highlighter, wincing as he gets a streak of neon green on an old essay. “Next week?” he asks from the floor, transferring one pen to his other hand. “I’m doing a lot next week, what do you mean?”

Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “For your  _ birthday _ , Yamaguchi. Y’know, your eighteenth birthday? Only comes once, I hear.”

“Oh…” Tadashi puts down his pens, caps the highlighter before it can dry out or do any more damage. “Well… It’s on Wednesday.”

“I know what day.”

“Sorry Tsukki,” he replies automatically. “I’m working on Wednesday. Right after school until five, then I have to go the middle school to pick up the kids from club.”

“Are you going out to dinner or anything?” Tsukishima asks, finally laying his book on his stomach to look at his best friend.

“Ah, probably not.” Tadashi looks at the floor as he speaks, attempting to tidy the area to give his hands something to do. A nervous habit. “My mom’s working from five to one,” he continues, “so I have to make dinner and help the kids with homework and make sure they go to bed on time and everything.” He shrugs, like the facts don’t bother him at all.

Tsukishima frowns. “Are they really making you work on your birthday?” he asks. Yamaguchi works at a cute little smoothie store between his house and the school, owned by a young girl just out of college. She’s very kind, and often works right alongside her employees. He finds it hard to believe she’d make anyone work on their birthday, especially Tadashi, who’s been a model employee since he was hired.

“Well, she doesn’t  _ know _ , it’s my birthday,” Tadashi admits. “I didn’t tell her.”

“She’d let you have it off if you asked, you know.”

Tadashi’s hands ball into fists on his legs, because of  _ course _ he knows. She’d give him any old day off if he just asked, but he  _ doesn’t _ , because he needs the money for college and his mother needs the money to raise the kids and keep the house and –

“Yamaguchi?”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll tell her.”

* * *

It reaches a peak when Tadashi is twenty, the skin around his left eye stained red and purple, weight on his right leg more than his left when he opens the front door of his boyfriend’s apartment to blink out at the person on the doorstep.

They stand in silence, eyes assessing each other, cataloguing the details of what has changed in the two years since they’ve last met. His hair is longer, Yamaguchi thinks, not as choppy as it was in high school and streaked now with darker strands. His glasses aren’t as narrow, they’re tall and square like the kind westerners wear.

Some things haven’t changed. He makes the same disappointed ‘tch’ sound against his teeth when he sees Tadashi’s black eye, his touch is still solid but gentle when he takes his hand and pulls him outside and into a hug.

Tears pour out, despite how hard Tadashi is biting his lip to keep them in, and he buries his face in his friend’s shoulder as his fingers grip the back of his sweater. “Sorry, Tsukki,” he mumbles when he feels the hands that pat a little awkwardly at his back.

“It’s okay, Tadashi,” he murmurs back, hands becoming a little less foreign as time goes by. “It’s okay.” He lets Tadashi cry into his shoulder for a while longer, not speaking, just letting his presence be enough of a comfort.

Finally, when Tadashi is wiping his eyes and his shoulders have stopped shaking, Tsukishima takes a few steps backward, still holding onto his hand. “Come on,” he says. “Come for a walk with me.” He tugs Tadashi until he starts walking with him, away from his boyfriend’s house and more toward a busier part of town.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Tsukishima asks when they’re under bright streetlights and groups of people are swarming around them.

Tadashi shrugs, glances at a coffee shop nearby until Tsukishima notices and steers them in. He sits the younger boy down in a booth and tells him to wait, returns a moment later with the order he still remembers after two years apart. They sit across from each other, sipping at their coffees until Tadashi’s chest stops shuddering and his eyes don’t burn anymore.

“What  _ happened _ Tadashi?” Tsukishima asks. His cup is on the table, and he spins it minutely between his fingertips.

Tadashi wipes his eyes, wincing as his fingers rub a little too hard over the bruised one. “Do you know the date?” he mumbles.

“The date? It’s the sixteenth, why?”

He nods. “April sixteenth. My two year anniversary with my boyfriend. He didn’t say anything about it, I thought maybe he was planning something? But I kinda – It was toward the end of the day and I didn’t say anything, I realized he forgot, and I was all down about it.”

“So…” Tsukishima gestures to his bruised eye. “That doesn’t really explain…”

“Well…” Tadashi sighs, takes a sip of his coffee and doesn’t really lower the cup from his lips. “He asked me why I was being all mopey and depressing,” he tells the styrofoam, “And I told him what day it was, and he got all mad at me.”

There’s a pause; Tsukishima waits for him to say something more, Tadashi waits for some sort of response.

“...That’s it?” Tsukishima finally asks.

“I mean, no, I start getting all stupid and mad at him, cuz I thought it was important but… it’s just a date. Doesn’t mean anything.”

Tsukishima squints at him doubtfully. It may have been a while since they’ve seen each other, but they grew up attached at the hip. He knows Tadashi, inside and out, and these kinds of things are important to him. Dates mean everything in his mind: birthdays, anniversaries, equinoxes and the celestial calendar… Tadashi hides behind his coffee.

“Are you sure it doesn’t matter to you?” Tsukishima asks quietly.

Tadashi looks away, eyes suddenly riveted on the wall behind his friend’s head. “Yeah,” he chokes. “Not at all.”


End file.
